Thursday, January 31, 2013

Popcorn Lung

When she told me it was
over I cried a little bit and then hung up the phone and raced over to her
apartment to drop off her waffle iron and her dog. We’d actually discussed it
the day before, so I wasn’t completely shocked. The next day was just the end of
the end I guess.

She’d
broken up with me a few times before, so the waffle iron was the only thing I
had left of hers. The time before she’d given back one of my DVDs and another
French one that belonged to my cousin. We never watched it.

I
don’t know why in the hell I took her dog for the night. Sentimentality maybe,
or I just thought we’d actually get back together again the next day. Her
landlord was coming over to look at the AC vents because they smelled like
sewage when the guy upstairs flushed the toilet. The dog was pretty excitable,
so it was best if she wasn’t there. I didn’t mind watching her really.

We went for a walk the
next morning and she squatted in the yard of a small apartment building. She’d
already shit somewhere else, but I looked around to see if anyone was watching.
On the basement floor of the apartment I saw an old man with pale, wiry hair
staring at us from below.

He yelled something out
the window about having respect. He sounded German or Yiddish, I wouldn’t have
known the difference.

“She’s just peeing…a
dog’s gotta pee,” I said and dismissed his concern with a wave of my arm in the
air. That must’ve incited him because then he yelled ‘fuck you’ over and over
until we walked away. An old woman came up behind him and grabbed his arm but I couldn't understand what she was saying. Both sets of eyes looked like moon pies or Little Lulu eyeballs. I returned a ‘fuck you’ to him once, but felt guilty as
we strolled away at a decent clip. I’ll never forget the image of that old man
peering up from the basement, his face level with the dog’s ass. She really
didn’t shit though. He had nothing to worry about.